Body's Question

Summary: Winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize,The Body's Questiondebuts Tracy K. Smith's ambitious and engaging new voice You are pure appetite. I am pure Appetite. You are a phantom In that far-off city where daylight Climbs cathedral walls, stone by stolen stone. --from "Self-Portrait as the Letter Y" The Body's Questionby Tracy K. Smith received the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African-A...merican poet, selected by Kevin Young. Confronting loss, historical intersections with race and family, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood, Smith gathers courage and direction from the many disparate selves encountered in these poems, until, as she writes, "I was anyone I wanted to be." [read more]